The Last: A Novel

OBSERVATIONS FROM L’HÔTEL SIXIÈME, SWITZERLAND

DAY 3

Nadia once told me that she was kept awake at night by the idea that she would read about the end of the world on a phone alert. It wasn’t exactly Kennedy’s Sword of Damocles speech, but I remember that moment word for word.

For me, three days ago, it happened over a complimentary breakfast.

I was sitting by the window, looking out onto the encroaching forest and the cleared path around the building leading to the rear parking lot.

There was a hum of chatter from couples and one or two families checking out early. I was the first of the conference attendees to come down. We had all stayed up late drinking the night before, but I tried not to deviate from routine, even if it hurt.

We weren’t supposed to be at this hotel. The conference had originally been situated slightly closer to Zurich, farther north, but there had been a fire at the intended venue eight months before. The move had been arranged without much fuss and the location changed to L’Hôtel Sixiôme, which we had joked was in the middle of nowhere. A pain in the ass to get to.

I was reading the opening chapter of What We Talk about When We Talk about Photoreconnaissance: The Legal and Performance History of Aerial Espionage, taking notes for an upcoming lecture series, and my phone was on silent.

A glass of orange juice to my left, and a black coffee. I’d spilled a little on the tablecloth in my eagerness to drink it and get a refill. I was waiting on eggs Benedict.

It’s the banality that pains me.

The last text I received from Nadia was sent at eleven thirty the night before. It said: I think everyone in my line of work is doing more harm than good. How can anyone love this job anymore? I miss you so much; you always know what to say when I’m feeling like this. I feel bad about how we left it. Love you.

I hadn’t replied to her crisis of faith because I thought I could get away with the delay. She knew the time difference meant that I was probably asleep. I wanted to give it some thought and reply in the morning with something measured and reassuring. There was still a need for excellent journalism, she could still make a difference . . . something like that. An email might be better.

We all thought we had time. Now we can’t send emails anymore.

A strange noise erupted from one of the tables, a shrill exclamation. The woman didn’t say anything, just cried out.

I looked up to see her sitting with her partner—I assume—and staring at her phone.

Like everyone else in the room, I thought she had just become overexcited by a message or a photo and returned to my book, but within seconds she added, They’ve bombed Washington!

I hadn’t even wanted to go to this damn conference.

I can’t entirely remember what happened in the hours that followed, but as I started scrolling through my own phone, the push notifications and social media timelines, I realized that Nadia had been right. It played out exactly as she had feared it would. In fact, the headlines are almost all I can remember at the moment.

Breaking: NuclearAttack on Washington in Progress. Story Developing.

Breaking: 200,000 Fatalities Estimated, Say Experts.

Breaking: Confirmed: President and Staff among Dead in Nuclear Explosion. Awaiting More Information.

Then there was some aerial video from London, and we all watched the buildings vanish into dust in real time, under the iconic pillar of cloud. That was the only footage available, so we watched it over and over. It didn’t seem as real as the headlines. Maybe we had all been desensitized to the imagery by too many movies. Watching a whole city be vaporized like that seemed too fast, and too quiet.

A plane crashed in the outskirts of Berlin, and we knew Berlin was gone only because someone in the plane had uploaded a video of their going down. Dust in the engines, maybe. I can’t remember what she was saying; she was crying and wasn’t speaking English. It was probably just good-bye.

Breaking: Nuclear Weapon Detonates over Washington, Hundreds of Thousands Feared Dead.

Breaking: Canadian Prime Minister Calls for Calm as Nuclear Attack Hits US.

Breaking: US without Government as Nuclear Bomb Devastates Washington.

Maybe I was lucky to be watching the end of the world online instead of living it, reacting to an explosion or a siren announcing one.

We’re not gone yet. This is the third day, and the Internet is down. I’ve been sitting in my hotel room watching what I can see of the horizon from my window. If anything happens, I’ll do my best to describe it. I can see for miles over the forest, so when it’s our turn I imagine I’ll have some warning. And it’s not like I have anyone to say good-bye to here.

I can’t believe I didn’t reply to Nadia’s text. I can’t believe I thought I had time.

DAY 6

I figure I should keep writing things down. The clouds are a strange color, but I’m not sure if that’s just me being in shock. They could be normal clouds.

I’ve also started checking off the days since we last had sunlight or rain. So far it’s been five.

The likelihood of Armageddon appearing on our horizon seems smaller now, but with the Internet gone and our cell phones refusing to make any connections, we have no idea what’s going on in the wider world. Either way, I’m not spending the majority of my time keeping watch at my window anymore. I need to eat.

I spoke to a few acquaintances down in the restaurant, where some of the staff are still providing food. They’re going to leave on foot. I’m going to wait until someone comes for us or an official procedure for evacuation is announced. We have no way of knowing when that will be. But someone will come eventually.

DAY 6 (2)

That was a lie, what I wrote before. I wanted to come to the conference. I was glad for the time away from Nadia and our children. I might die soon; there’s no point in lying about it now.

I’m sorry, Nadia. If you ever read this, I’m so, so sorry.

I’m not sure anybody is coming.

DAY 8

Weather is unchanged.

I went for a walk around the hotel and found the bodies of two people who had hanged themselves in the stairwell. Two men. I don’t know who they were. Dylan, the hotel’s head of security, helped me bury them out front. A few other people came to stand with us, holding candles in an impromptu vigil.

On our way back from the burial, I asked Dylan if anyone was coming to evacuate us. He said no, probably not, but he didn’t want to cause panic. In the meantime, at least we’re all following a routine of sorts. We come down for breakfast and dinner, and the rest of the time we hide away in our rooms.

I wonder if the bombing is still going on, whether one will hit us soon. Maybe it would be for the best. It’s the not knowing that I can’t stand.

Today was the first day I realized that I’m probably never going to see Nadia, Ruth, or Marion again. Or my dad and his wife, my students, my friends. Even the people I knew at the conference have gone. They left.

I feel nauseated. I can’t tell if it’s radiation poisoning or not.

DAY 18

So far, no one has died of radiation poisoning.

No one is coming for us. There is definitely no evacuation.

Dylan and a couple of other men left the hotel this morning with hunting rifles and returned with deer. The assumption seems to be that we’re going to be here for a while. I counted heads this morning in the restaurant and there are twenty-four of us. There are at least two young children, and an elderly couple, one of whom can’t hear.

Is this it? I mean, for humanity. Am I the last person alive making notes on the end of the world? I’m not sure whether I would rather already be dead.

DAY 20

Weather unchanged.

We have a doctor in the hotel. I don’t know her name yet.

I know that we have a doctor only because a Frenchwoman killed herself in the stairwell. She had tied her shoelaces together and thrown herself down the stairs while holding her baby daughter. Unfortunately, it was too late for the doctor to save the mother, but the baby survived, at least. The Japanese couple have been taking care of her.

I had another talk with Dylan. He was thinking of cutting the gas and electricity to the top floors at the end of the week. He doesn’t know how long we have before we run out of either, so he would feel more comfortable saving the electricity to keep our food frozen over the coming months, and the gas for cooking.

Earlier, we had a brief vote on it while we were eating dinner. When Dylan explained the food situation, everyone voted in favor, and the electricity and gas in all our rooms were cut off. It’s the beginning of July, but the first thing I noticed was how cold it is now.

DAY 21

Another two gone. The elderly couple stepped out of one of the top-floor windows. It’s hard to judge them under the circumstances, but for the ordeal that we all went through cleaning them up and burying them.

DAY 22

I noticed that people have started chatting at mealtimes. No one had really been speaking to one another before now.

I think I recognize one of them, a blond girl. I’m not sure where from, as she wasn’t attending the conference. She’s the only other American left, as far as I can tell. But I haven’t spoken to her. She seems to prefer being alone.

A man named Patrick is staying in a room a few doors down from mine. Sometimes he runs up and down the corridor right outside my door. It’s a little disconcerting, hearing the footfalls at night.

DAY 26

The bartender said to me today, This is nothing like how I thought dying in a nuclear war would be, but I’m glad there’s an open bar.

DAY 27

I’m sure I heard guitar music last night. I went for a walk, which was terrifying even by candlelight, and tried to locate the room it was coming from. But I couldn’t find it. In fact, I couldn’t find anyone. Fourteen floors, almost a thousand rooms, and I didn’t see or hear a single person. This place is much larger than I had realized. It makes me feel uneasy.

Dear Nadia,

It’s been a month now, and I don’t imagine you’ll ever read this. I’m not sure you’re even still alive. But while there’s the slightest chance you could end up reading these notes, you should know, you deserved so much better than me. Maybe you came to realize that toward the end.

I’m sorry that even at the end of the world, I was absent. Late again! I never was any good at being in the right place at the right time. I’m sorry you had to endure so many of my failures. Everything I admire in our children came from you.

Please stay as safe as you can, for as long as you can.

I’m sorry for assuming I had more time.

I love you. I will never stop. I promise that, even if it’s not in this life, I will find you again somehow.

Yours,

Jon

DAY 40

I haven’t left my room in a while. I’ve been too depressed to write or see anyone. Today was the first time I went outside in over a week. I took a walk out front.

I asked the bartender, whose name is Nathan, about the sky, and he agreed with me that the clouds are a funny color.

Rust colored, he said.

The doctor, whose name I now know is Tania, had gone for a run in the surrounding forest. She stopped near us and followed our gaze up to the sky. It’s freezing. None of us brought enough winter clothes to adapt to the abrupt end of our summer, and of human civilization.

Are you talking about the clouds? she asked.

Yeah; weird, aren’t they? Nathan said.

They’re orange. She shielded her eyes, even though there wasn’t any sun. A habit from the time before.

I’m glad it’s not just me, I said. I thought it was shock making me see things.

Do you think it’s . . . like, radiation? Nathan asked.

No, Tania said with certainty. That color is probably dust and debris from the explosions. The same thing would happen if an asteroid hit us.

We all watched the orange clouds for a while in silence, before Tania appeared to cool down and start shivering.

Creepy, she said as she headed inside. All the trees will start dying soon.

Weather unchanged.

DAY 48

Keep it together.

DAY 49

I’m going to keep writing. I feel like if I don’t keep writing, I’ll lie down and die.

A NARRATIVE CHRONICLE OF THE INITIAL POST-NUCLEAR MONTHS BY POSSIBLY THE LAST LIVING HISTORIAN, DR. JON KELLER

DAY 50

The water has been running cloudy and tasted off, so Dylan, Nathan, and I went up to the roof to check the water tanks.

Dylan is one of the only members of staff who hasn’t fled. A tall black man in his late forties with an infectious smile and cropped hair, he’s become our default leader after the breakdown. He knows the hotel and the surrounding terrain better than anybody, and has worked here for over twenty years. When he speaks English it’s in a rich baritone, with barely any trace of an accent. I can’t tell where he’s from. He may be Swiss.

Dead birds, probably, he said as we scaled the thirteen flights of stairs. They must be looking for water too.

I wish it had been dead birds.

I had to stop at the tenth-floor landing and sit on my box of tools to rest. Nathan followed suit.

Dylan shrugged. He didn’t bother putting his toolbox down while he waited for us to catch our breath.

How are you staying so ripped? Nathan asked.

Effort.

That’ll do it. He looked at me. What about you, Jon?

Oh, I maintain this impressive lack of physique with absolutely no effort. I looked down at myself. My job involved a lot of sitting. A lot of intense reading and thinking.

I don’t think I realized how useless we’d all be at this until I tried starting a fire without a lighter. Nathan snorted. "I couldn’t believe no one here knew how to start a fire. I mean, I knew I couldn’t, but I thought someone else might."

I hated camping, Dylan said. A vacation isn’t a vacation if you can’t sit in a robe and drink schnapps in peace.

I hated camping too, I agreed.

I hated schnapps, Nathan chimed in.

I smiled. I think only children like camping. I have two, so I had to go more than I would’ve liked.

How much would that have been? Dylan asked.

Never.

Nathan laughed. He’s a skinny young Australian of mixed race who used to run the hotel bar. His eyes are heavy lidded and his voice strangely monotone, which initially makes him seem apathetic. But he’s one of the most animated and upbeat members of the group. He can still make others laugh; a rare occurrence nowadays.

Didn’t know you had kids, Dylan said, finally putting his toolbox down. I have a daughter.

How old? I asked.

Thirty.

Where . . . um, where is she?

She lived in Munich, with her husband. He didn’t need to elaborate on what that meant. What about yours?

They’re back in San Francisco with their mom. Six and twelve.

What were you doing out here? Were you attending the conference?

Yeah.

I thought they all left.

Yeah, most of the people who tried to get to the airport were my colleagues, acquaintances from other colleges.

I thought more of them might have come back, Nathan said, standing again. Once they realized . . . I always wondered, why go at all? We were told that planes weren’t taking off and the roads were gonna be insane. Surely more would have come back.

Dylan picked up his toolbox. No, I think once you’re out, you’re going to keep moving.

I was surprised, that’s all, said Nathan. So many of them. Like, where did they think they were gonna catch a plane to?

I got up and hoisted my box of tools onto my hip, and we started climbing again.

A lot of people confuse movement with progress, Dylan said. I knew it was a bad idea, but what were we gonna do, barricade them in? They weren’t ready to face any kind of truth.

I leaned against the wall of the stairwell as Dylan got out his set of keys. The air in here was too thick, full of dust and last breaths. It stank. I hated the stairwell, but of course the elevators weren’t working anymore; hadn’t worked for two months, not since that first day.

Confusing movement with progress. I wish more people had thought that way before, I said. Might have avoided all this.

Jon, you’re not wrong. Where were you when people needed a sane guy to vote for?

I didn’t have an answer for him.

We spread out on the roof and took one water tank each. There were four towering cylinders with ladders running up the sides. I tucked a shovel into my belt and started climbing.

I had to take my gloves off to grip the rungs, and it was freezing. I thought I’d known cold before, but it was nothing compared with this. It was constant and invasive. It rearranged the structure of your body and you found yourself walking with your head bent, shoulders hunched, and back rounded all the time.

When I reached the top, I turned and looked out over the forest and down at the grounds. The air was clear but the cloud cover was low, and everything was dusk. On my first night here, I had been able to hear the whir of insect activity from the third floor. Now the trees were silent, browning and dying even though it was August. No birds; total stillness. It took over an hour to get to the nearest city, and the woods went on for miles after that.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d truly seen the sun. I saw it passing behind the clouds sometimes, as though it were dancing just out of reach, visible only as a dull, two-dimensional ornament behind a gray veil.

I wondered which of my colleagues had made it to the airport and what they might have found there. Not all of them had driven away immediately. The ones who had left later, alone or in groups of two or three, and on foot, had severely underestimated the depth of the forest and how cold it would be. I had tried to stop some of them, but people weren’t as open to reason as before.

Actually, people hadn’t been that open to reason before. That was part of the problem.

A balled fist of emotion rose up into my throat and took hold of it, cutting off my breath.

I pushed it back down.

You okay with that? Dylan shouted over to me.

I gripped the lid’s handle and my fingers stung, starting to go numb. I couldn’t feel my lips or my nose. Yeah. It’s pretty solid. Won’t budge!

Wait there; I’ll come over! This one’s fine. Dylan started climbing down.

No, I think I’ve got it! I reached behind me for the shovel and jammed it into the space where the lid of the trapdoor met the tank. Metal clanged and screeched, making my teeth clench. Then the lid began giving way, and I leaned the shovel across the top of the tank to pry it open.

Darkness.

Shifting my weight on the ladder, trying not to think of the height and the cold, I lowered the shovel with my right hand and fished around. The water was so low that I could barely touch the surface, but from what I could see, there weren’t any carcasses or debris floating below.

We were going to run out of water soon, I realized.

The dull flutter of panic that had settled permanently into my chest over the last two months intensified, making me light-headed. It happened every time I focused on anything outside the task immediately at hand. I had to lock myself into the present and refuse to acknowledge the past or the future as real. It was the only way to stay sane.

This one’s fine too! I called, but my voice got lost in the wind.

I heard a sharp, gasped Fuck! and looked across the roof in time to see Nathan slip and plummet from the top of the ladder.

Instinct took over and I moved as if to catch him, stepping clean off the rung. I lost sight of Nathan as I fell, hooked my right arm over a rung, and took my whole weight in the crook of my elbow, slamming into the side of the water tank with a bang.

I thought I’d dislocated my shoulder as agony shot across my chest and collarbones. But I hadn’t. It held. I pulled myself back to safety with bleeding fingers and saw that I had sent the shovel flying.

Nathan was on the ground but getting to his feet. He was okay. Dylan was next to him, also finding his footing.

I climbed down as fast as I could and jogged across the rooftop.

What happened? Are you guys okay?

There’s something in there. I’m not fucking joking. Nathan was inspecting his arms, rolling up his three layers of sleeves. Tank’s almost empty, but there’s something in there.

Dylan looked like he had taken a beating. At second glance, it seemed like Nathan had probably landed on top of him.

It looked like a body, he said.

A human body?

Yeah, I thought it was . . . I don’t know, an animal or something. I leaned in to try to hook it out. Nathan went quiet, put a hand to his mouth. "It was small, but it’s not a fucking animal; it’s got hair. Girl hair. Fuck. How would a kid even get up here?"

A child, Dylan said. Jesus.

I looked up at the tank. It was over twenty feet tall, easily. Maybe thirty. Who has the keys to the roof?

There’s a few, but only staff members have them. Dylan frowned.

Nathan sat on the roof, massaging his forearms and his right ankle. We need to cut the tank off or get that thing out and clean it. Everyone’s . . . shit, everyone’s been drinking it. Fuck. Fuck! I’m gonna throw up. I can’t believe we’ve all been drinking that.

I had to rest a hand against the water tank and steady myself. My stomach turned.

Even Dylan looked rattled, but he shook it off faster than me. He said, We need to open the other tanks up, like way open, and saw the tops off so they can collect rainwater.

Does it even rain anymore? I asked.

We looked at one another, but none of us seemed sure. Truth be told, I couldn’t remember if I’d seen any rain since day one. That day had been sunny. Nothing about the environment from then on stuck out in my memory. We lived under a constant blanket of cloud, and some days it was a lighter shade of gray than others. That was it.

Well, it needs to be done. If we don’t have weather, there’s a lake nearby, and we’ve got other sources. But first we need to get that kid out of there. Nath, go get a tarp or a sheet of plastic. Get Tania as well. Jon, I’m gonna need the shovel.

I helped Nathan up and he left the roof, returning with a plastic tarp. From the pallid shine on his cheeks I could tell he had been crying.

Dylan took the shovel and scaled the tank with the tarp slung over his shoulder. I was glad he had offered and that we hadn’t drawn straws or something. In all honesty, I don’t think I could have done it.

As Dylan came slowly back down the ladder, the tiny body wrapped in plastic and tucked into the crook of his arm, another wave of sadness hit me, and this time it almost knocked me flat.

Nathan hung back.

Girl? Looks about seven or eight, from the size of her. I don’t know. Dylan laid the body on the ground. Where’s Tania?

Nathan’s voice didn’t come out right the first time, and he had to clear his throat. She’s . . . She’s seeing someone else but said we could bring the body down to her room.

A little kid couldn’t have gotten up here by herself, I said, unable to wrench my eyes away. Someone put her there.

She might have climbed in looking for—

She couldn’t have climbed in herself, Dylan cut in. We’re three men, and we struggled to open those lids up.

How long do you think she’s been in there? I asked.

I don’t know. What do you think?

I can’t tell.

The body had bloated a little, but she still looked so human to me, the girl. Almost alive, preserved somehow. Her skin was mottled gray and yellow, some bits of green, but there hadn’t been much rot. It made sense, given the drop in temperature. The only parts of her that had fallen away were her clothes.

So she was killed. I said it because I could tell no one else wanted to. She was murdered.

Nathan started shivering, and it was catching. I wrapped my arms around myself.

Dylan sighed. Maybe. But let’s face it: we don’t have a way of finding out who she was. Her parents are going to be long gone. No one here’s been talking about a missing girl. Whoever it was, they could have checked out even before all of this started.

Checked out without their daughter? I thought of my daughter Marion laughing and running away from the sea at Fort Funston. That doesn’t seem right.

To distract myself from the image, I stepped forward and bent down to gather up the girl, wrapping the crackling plastic tarp around her as though she were sleeping. I didn’t notice until I was holding her that my hands were still bleeding. I hadn’t been able to feel them for a while.

I’ll carry her down, I said.

She weighed almost nothing.

DAY 50 (2)

Tania’s the only doctor in the hotel, and we’re lucky she was staying here. With our deteriorating nutrition and constant requests for medication (unsurprisingly, most people have asked for antidepressants that we don’t have), she’s inundated. But you would never know it. She carries herself with a terse pride. Her skin is dark, and at the moment her hair is a purple-tinted Afro, though I’ve seen its style change from week to week.

During one of our first conversations she told me she had grown up a foster child in England and then Switzerland, but she also had family in Nigeria and Jamaica.

Her boyfriend ran on the first day, taking his chances on the roads against the advice of the public service announcements; he’d also taken their car. She chose not to go with him, and she continues to stand by her decision with a regal silence. She hasn’t spoken a word about him since, which is why I can’t recall his name.

She looked the child’s body over in her makeshift examination room and confirmed that it was indeed a girl—nine years old but on the small side—and that she’d been dead for approximately two months.

I sat in a chair beside the bed—Tania’s ersatz examination table—and rubbed my throbbing hands together.

Dylan and Nathan were off searching for heavier tools to carve open the water tanks. It would be a huge operation; likely to take a few days, maybe even a week. I was looking forward to it. Less time to think.

How did she die? I asked.

I can’t tell. I’d have to do an autopsy, and I’ve never done one before, only watched. It’s never really been my job.

Unless she becomes animated, which is rare, her voice is quiet, soothing. It might just be professional.

I can’t see any marks.

Could be deceiving. Water can do weird things to flesh, and you can see the skin has started to split and come away here, and here. But . . . no, I agree, I can’t see any marks that would indicate a blow to the head or strangulation. It doesn’t look like she’s been sexually assaulted either, though that’s much harder to tell.

Are there ways to check that? Now?

She met my eyes. Yeah.

I took a breath. So she died around the time—

A couple of months ago, definitely, so maybe just before everything happened, or just after. Bodies decompose more slowly in water—even slower when it’s this cold—but there’s no way to be certain about her time of death. I’m sure that it’s not recent. I’d like to see if there’s water in her lungs.

Wouldn’t that be the case anyway?

She shook her head, speaking without looking at me. Not unless she went into the tank still breathing.

Tania surveyed the tools she had lined up along the dressing table: a selection of all the hotel’s first-aid items, plus some choice pieces of cutlery. I noticed a fish knife and wondered if she’d had to use it yet.

She sighed and rubbed her face. I wish I had some of my things. That would make this so much easier.

Make a list; we could look next week.

Dylan had arranged another food expedition: a real one, to the city, rather than a hunt through the forest. He’d estimated that we would start running out of supplies within the next three months. We also needed meds, more so than food. The nearest pharmacy was in a large supermarket that was a significant trek through the woods away, and we couldn’t guarantee it hadn’t already been looted.

Dylan was in charge, and Tania had volunteered but had been refused; she’s too valuable. Patrick Bernardeaux, a fit and practical French dentist, was coming. He spent a lot of his time running. Adam, a serious but strong-looking